Children's Centre/Kid Space
Proposal

Pakrac November 24, 1996

The idea for Kid Space grew from the success of the Puppet
Theatre sub-project. Like the puppet theatre which began in Pakrac in
November 1995, Kid Space is a non-threatening approach to
reintegration and reconciliation. In particular, it seeks to address
the reintegration of Serb children into the local school system.
Following the military action in May 1995, children from both sides
of the town began attending the same schools in Pakrac. After four
years of living in essentially separate communities, the
reintegration process has been slow and difficult and remains so. In
addition to this, with the exception of formalised activities such as
daily school attendance, no extra curricular activities were available
to children from either side of the formerly divided town. Kid Space
is one of the initiatives developed to address this problem and
facilitate the recovery of the war traumatised communities.
Volunteers have been able to work with the children of both
communities, see their needs, wants and great ability to learn and
embrace new ideas and options.
Time spent with these children has also led to a realisation that
the effects of armed conflict, nationalism and discrimination
sometimes fall hardest on the children who are the witnesses of such
destruction. With the absence of a neutral and safe social meeting
place and the fast approaching winter, Kid Space would provide a non-
threatening environment for socialisation and relaxation. It offers
children an opportunity to develop communicative and cooperative
skills and to build self-confidence and esteem in a non-threatening
environment open to all.

An alternative space

Kid Space would cater for children from the ages of 6 to 12. It
is envisioned that it could act as a meeting place where children
could spend their free time and enjoy both structured activities and
leisure time. Kid Space would also be the venue for games, workshops
and special days. Volunteers would provide supervision while
engaging the children to help take responsibility for their space.
Together volunteers, parents and children would work to coordinate
both the activities and free time within the centre. It is hoped that
the responsibility given to the children will lead to a development
in self-confidence and awareness and also allow them to learn new
skills.

Follow-up

In the future, we would expand Kid Space by establishing an art
program, a library and a youth club.
Children who are interested in pursuing artistic outlets of
expression have few options in Pakrac. In order to help provide them
an avenue for expression and development, we plan to start an art
program. Various mediums would be offered: dance, drawing and
painting, singing, sculpture, music lessons, literary discussion
groups and a writing forum.
The library facilitates in Pakrac are also unsatisfactory for
children and we hope to fill that void by establishing our own. The
Kid Space library would be aimed specifically at the children and
contain books ranging from children's stories and novels to
nonfiction educational works on the sciences, history, etc. Through
this we encourage the children to explore and develop their interests
on their own intitiative. In addition, we plan to offer special
courses on a wide variety of topics based on the children's
suggestion in order to provide another way for them to pursue
interests outside school.
Finally, we would like to re-open the youth club which opened in
1994 and closed this fall. Since 1995, the project was run
exclusively by a pair of teenagers and supervised by a teacher. It
closed this fall because they lost a space to house the project.
Being a popular and important gathering place for young Pakracani, we
would like to help the youth club re-open.

Through working with the children and allowing them to take
personal control of their surroundings, it is hoped that they will
begin the slow process of recovery and readjustment. The volunteers
will be dealing with a variety of issues such as socialisation,
recovery and normalisation. In addition, they will be depended on to
aid in the development of self-esteem and confidence building
within the children while ensuring a stress-free environment away from
the pressures of homelife and parents.